1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for providing cooperation between events (launch, actions, etc., of an application) generated at a client and information sent from a server to the client, and more particularly, it relates to an event-driven information display system and an event-driven information display method in which pieces of information such as advertisements, contents and the like corresponding to various operations or actions of a client are displayed at the client.
2. Description of the Related Art
At present, various methods and technologies are used for computerized advertising and information delivery. For instance, there is a method in which a means for accessing advertisements, contents and the like related to an application is built in the application in such a manner as to register a URL of a Web site in a menu of the application in advance. In this case, the user can access the advertisements, contents and the like related to the application by launching the application and selecting a corresponding menu.
Moreover, when a user is intended to acquire information related to an application from a Web site in cases where the application is not provided with such a means or function as referred to above, it is common for the user to acquire, through his or her own operation, the URL of the Web site where the advertisements, contents and the like related to the application are shown, by using search pages on Webs, search software, a collection of links or the like. In addition, there is a technique in which a corporate advertisement is displayed in a browser window pasted on the desktop of a personal computer and replaced with another one at regular intervals.
There is also another technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-134353 entitled “Individual-specific Advertisement Delivery Method, Individual-specific Advertisement Delivery System, and Recording Medium On Which An Individual-specific Advertisement Distribution Program Is Recorded”. This technique enables advertisements to be distributed to users according to a consistency or matching level between a field to which the user frequently accesses and a field to which the advertisements belong. In addition, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-272574 discloses a further technique entitled “Information Delivery Method, Information Delivery System, And Recording Medium On Which An Information Delivery Processing Program Is Recorded”. This technique enables information, which is suited to the browser's state to be used, the age, the occupation, the taste, and the physical condition of a user, etc., to be distributed to the user. Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-20316 discloses a system which is capable of carrying out the settings of the operating environments of pre-installed applications, which have conventionally been done manually for each computer. Besides, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-28736 discloses a method in which when a client program and a server program are running on different computers, respectively, connected to each other via a network, the amount of data to be exchanged between the client and server programs upon generation of an event can be reduced, thereby preventing a deterioration in the communication performance on the network.
However, there is a limitation on the number of advertisements, contents and the like able to be displayed in a rectangular area (e.g., a browser window, etc.) which is provided on the desktop of a personal computer. Therefore, the information delivery methods and techniques as referred to above cannot meet the demands of enterprises (advertisers or sponsors) which want to produce earnings by displaying a lot of advertisements, contents and the like in a limited rectangular area as effectively as possible. Moreover, it is important to the sponsors that the advertising expenses are suppressed to low costs and that the advertisements, contents and the like appeal to target users without fail, which are, however, difficult to achieve by using the prior art methods and techniques.
In addition, advertisement and information display methods disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-134353 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-272574 are proposed from the standpoints of sponsors and users, but they can not fulfill the needs of both the sponsors and users as mentioned above to any satisfactory extent. In addition, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2000-20316 and 7-28736 describe a method of automating the installation of an application and a method of improving the communication performance of a network, respectively, but any of these methods does not lead to a satisfactory solution for the problems as mentioned above.